I'm thinking ahead to when my son reaches school age. I once came across what I think is a great suggestion (particularly for home-schooled children): making a giant timeline of world history that wraps around your living room (or down a long hallway). You start with just a few key times labeled (like the present and the birth of Jesus). It stays on the wall permanently, and every time a historical event or person comes up in your daily discussions or lessons, you (as a family) add it to the timeline.
(A digression on scale: If you have 40-feet of wall space--say a 10-foot square room--and use a scale of 5 years per cm, that will cover a little over 6000 years of history. A child can then visually compare his, say, 1cm age to historical time-spans.)
So, I'm interested in learning more about the dating of the major Biblical events, to know where to place them on the timeline. I've seen Biblical chronologies before (and they are easy to find with google), but I'm interested in where those dates came from. How did they come up with that date? Do different people argue for different dates? What are their arguments? Which dates are known with greater or lesser certainty? etc.
I've encountered some dates for things from non-Christian scholars, based on reasoning that most Christians would find objectionable. And then it's possible for those dates to be passed around uncritically, unaware of the assumptions behind those dates. So I'm interested in the arguments and assumptions used to back up the dates.
Ideally, it would be nice to be able to go back to Adam and Eve and Creation. But I imagine that going back in time beyond a certain point raises sharp disagreement between YEC and TE.
Any resources would be helpful. It is also fine if anyone wants to present any arguments, for/against any dates or reasoning behind them, in this thread. However I don't want the thread to get buried by a lengthy debate on any one particular date. Also this thread is not the place to debate YEC/TE/etc, although resources/arguments starting from any of those viewpoints are welcome.
(A digression on scale: If you have 40-feet of wall space--say a 10-foot square room--and use a scale of 5 years per cm, that will cover a little over 6000 years of history. A child can then visually compare his, say, 1cm age to historical time-spans.)
So, I'm interested in learning more about the dating of the major Biblical events, to know where to place them on the timeline. I've seen Biblical chronologies before (and they are easy to find with google), but I'm interested in where those dates came from. How did they come up with that date? Do different people argue for different dates? What are their arguments? Which dates are known with greater or lesser certainty? etc.
I've encountered some dates for things from non-Christian scholars, based on reasoning that most Christians would find objectionable. And then it's possible for those dates to be passed around uncritically, unaware of the assumptions behind those dates. So I'm interested in the arguments and assumptions used to back up the dates.
Ideally, it would be nice to be able to go back to Adam and Eve and Creation. But I imagine that going back in time beyond a certain point raises sharp disagreement between YEC and TE.
Any resources would be helpful. It is also fine if anyone wants to present any arguments, for/against any dates or reasoning behind them, in this thread. However I don't want the thread to get buried by a lengthy debate on any one particular date. Also this thread is not the place to debate YEC/TE/etc, although resources/arguments starting from any of those viewpoints are welcome.
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